Clear is Kind
Clear is Kind
Hi, I'm Jules
I believe that relationships are our biome, our birthright, our heart, and our home. I help people develop healthy, functional relationships with themselves, with each other, and with reality.
We do this through the creation of healthy boundaries, a solid internal sense of worth, and a willingness to ride the roller coaster that is life.
I explore these concepts of boundaries, worth, and trust in processes that are hard. I help people create practices that move these ideas from a nice thought into a reality that can change a life.
I love nuance and complexity and you won't see me shy away from either. This is a space for depth and messiness, as well as practice, transformation, and awakening. Discover your authentic self and live fully.
Clear is Kind
The Origin
Over the last several years, I have been in an observation about something with the clients with whom I’ve worked. As they developed a clearer sense of themselves, as they faced what was true in their lives, and as they got into healthier relationships, they got kinder. I had been noticing how all these clients were naturally talking about living more authentically and also reporting about all these moments that lifted my heart, and I was seeing: Yes! Humanity can be this thoughtful, this giving, this magical. I was feeling in awe of them, and inspired to keep digging deeper in myself so that I could have moments like that too. Sure enough, it is working!
Then, one day I was with my friend Sue, and we were walking into a restaurant saying no thanks to a group of mutual acquaintances, as we were excited to spend some time visiting with just the two of us. She said “Like Brené Brown says, Clear is Kind.” That phrase really caught my attention. It felt to me that she had just defined for me what I was seeing in all the people I was working with. It was the multilayered boundary work that they were doing that was shifting things. It was increasing their felt sense of safety, it was increasing their sense of self worth, they were becoming more responsive and vulnerable in their relationships and they were facing the griefs that inevitably come with life. Because of all this, they were getting kinder. Kinder with themselves, kinder with the people close to them, and kinder to the world as a whole. More vulnerable, more real, and more kind.
That day, I looked up Brené Brown’s blog post on this and it turns out that she was commenting on an old phrase from AA. Clear is Kind. Unclear is Unkind. I don’t know who said it first, but thank you to whoever did because man are you right!
I have come to believe that clarity and truth will set us free. That we have to get clear with ourselves, with each other and with reality, if we really want to live whole-hearted, authentic, connected lives. I believe that multilayered boundary work is one path to get there. I teach workshops for therapists and for the general public, and I am so excited to share with you something that feels really true to me: Clear is Kind.